I. Field
The present disclosure relates generally to communication, and more specifically to techniques for performing channel and noise estimation for a multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) transmission.
II. Background
A MIMO transmission is a transmission from multiple (T) transmit antennas to multiple (R) receive antennas. For example, a transmitter may simultaneously transmit T data streams from the T transmit antennas. These data streams are distorted by the propagation environment and further degraded by noise. A receiver receives the transmitted data streams via the R receive antennas. The received signal from each receive antenna contains scaled versions of the transmitted data streams, possibly at different delays determined by the propagation environment. The transmitted data streams are thus dispersed among the R received signals from the R receive antennas. The receiver would then perform receiver spatial processing (e.g., space-time equalization) on the R received signals in order to recover the transmitted data streams.
The receiver may derive channel and noise estimates for the MIMO channel and may then derive weights for a space-time equalizer based on the channel and noise estimates. The quality of the channel and noise estimates may have a large impact on performance. There is therefore a need in the art for techniques to derive quality channel and noise estimates for a MIMO transmission.